Vindicate (Recovered Innocence #1)(8)

She loves Cassandra. I can hear it in her voice, but I don’t think it’s an old love. I think it’s a love that grew from necessary familiarity through the case and with Cassandra being a victim in this just like her brother.

“Why did she and Beau break up?”

“I’m not really sure.” Her gaze slides away to the photo of Cassandra.

“Beau never said?”

“No.”

“How long were they broken up?”

“Two months. Maybe a little longer. Cassandra was getting ready to go to UC San Diego. Beau was supposed to go to Santa Barbara. I don’t know if they broke up because they thought they had to because of the distance or if it was…something else.”

She rubs her thumb over Cassandra’s hair. She’s far away, somewhere in her head. I want to reach across the table and take the hand that can’t stop touching the photo of a dead woman. Instead, I stand and move around to her side of the table. She glances at me as though I materialized into the chair next to her by magic. I pull the binder away from her and try to see what she sees when she looks at the photo. All I see is a pretty young woman with brown hair and brown eyes. I have no emotional attachment to this person, but I can tell by the expression on her face that she was happy. And in love.

“Did Beau take this?”

“Yeah.” She’s uneasy letting me touch her binder. She puts a hand out as if to take it back and then pulls the gesture, tucking a blue strand of hair behind her ear. Earrings stud her ear from bottom to top. That blue again. Cora blue.

I stroke my thumb over the pic just the way she did. I want to know Cassandra. I want to know what it’s like to have a chick look at me like Cassandra’s looking at Beau. I want Cora to look at me like that just once. That’s a stupid, f*cked-up, selfish thing to think, but I can hardly think of anything I want more.

“Why do you think they broke up?” I have to know. How could they go from this picture to…nothing? Beau must’ve hated not seeing that look on Cassandra’s face anymore. I know I would.

“I think…” She stares down at the photo as though she doesn’t want to betray a woman who wouldn’t even know it if she did. “I think Cassandra met someone else.” Not just Cassandra. Cora’s admission betrays Beau too, because it gives him a motive to kill.

“What makes you think that?”

“I overheard part of a conversation Beau had on the phone with her a couple weeks after she stopped coming over. Beau locked himself in his room every day when he was at home, so I knew something was up. Then one day I heard shouting, so I put my ear to his door. I heard Beau ask her how many times and then he asked her why she was just telling him this now. He was very, very angry with her.”

Whoa. “What do you think he was talking about?”

“I don’t know. That’s all I heard.”

“Did you ever ask Beau about that conversation?”

“He wouldn’t talk about it then or now. He gets mad all over again when I mention it. I didn’t find anything that might answer your questions in my investigation. But then my notes on her aren’t as complete as they could be.”

I nod. We’re going to have to find a way to get in with Cassandra’s group of friends and family. That isn’t going to be easy. We can’t come at them with the truth.

Cora takes a long drink of water. I watch her throat move and the way her lips press against the mouth of the water bottle. She drains it and replaces the cap, looking at it like she doesn’t know what to do with it. I take it from her and toss it behind us. She gapes at me like I’ve just committed some horrible crime. I like surprising her. She doesn’t seem like someone who’s easily shocked.

“I’ll get it later,” I tell her.

She taps her nails on the table once, twice, and then looks at the bottle.

“I’ll get it,” I say again.

The expression on her face as she turns back around makes me laugh.

“No, really. I will.”

A corner of her lip tugs up. “Uh-huh.”

“Are we having our first fight?”

“Something tells me we’re going to have lots of fights before the summer’s over.”

“As long as we make up.”

I took it too far. The almost smile fades and she takes in a breath like you do when you’re about to deliver bad news.

“It was just a joke,” I cut in, before she can say anything.

I don’t like the rejection in her eyes. I want the almost-smile back. I want to make it grow into something real that creases her cheeks. But I have a feeling it’s been a long time since she’s allowed herself to smile with any real happiness. Too damn long. I don’t feel sorry for her though. You can’t look at her and feel pity. That’s not one of the emotions she provokes in me or from the world in general. There’s pride there—so much pride—and determination. She’s stubborn, but it’s the kind of obstinacy that draws you in and makes you want to be a part of whatever she’s involved in.

That’s exactly why I’m sitting in this chair next to her, silently vowing to be her knight in this battle she’s waging. And why I gave up whatever f*ck-around things I was going to do this summer to do the one thing I swore I’d never do—become a private investigator, if only temporarily.